The Most Common "Why Do" Questions People Are Asking In Your State, According to Google

Among its many uses, Google serves as a virtual therapist, animal behaviorist, and armchair physician, according to a new map created by the team over at AT&T All Home Connections. The group mined Google Trends to look up each state's most asked "Why do" questions, and broke down their findings into a single map.

Luckily for internet users across America, Mental Floss has answers for some of these pressing questions. For example, residents of Oregon, Iowa, Kansas, and Kentucky wondered why cats like to knead, or "make biscuits." This puzzling behavior could be chalked up to cats trying to mark humans as "territory" using the scent glands in their paws. Or, it could be a "neotenic behavior," or a kittenish trait that cats retain as adults.

As for Floridians, many want an explanation for why they "feel so alone." Meanwhile, Utah and Louisiana residents wanted to know why we yawn. (Short answer? We don't know, although there are many theories.) Hawaiians were curious about the history of Halloween. (Its origins are rooted in an ancient Celtic holiday known as Samhain.) And South Carolinians and Washington, D.C. locals who googled "Why do I sweat so much?" will likely be relieved to learn that their perspiration levels are probably average.

The Most Popular Viral Video in Each State

Viral videos have been around long enough for some to be considered classics. For the map below, the internet service provider GetCenturyLink rounded up the most iconic YouTube videos from the platform's 13-year history and broke them down by state.

After making a list of the most popular viral videos from the classic YouTube era through today, analysts looked at Google Trends’s YouTube search data to see which videos were being watched the most in which parts of the country. The "Wedding Entrance Dance" video is the viral content with the most widespread appeal, dominating searches in 11 states. "Charlie Bit My Finger", the video on the map with the most overall views at 860 million, topped the list of favorite bits in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, and Texas. Meanwhile "Potter Puppet Pals" is the most beloved viral video in Utah, the state with highest percentage of Harry Potter fans based on how many residents like the Harry Potter Facebook page.

Many of the videos on this map were uploaded prior to 2010, but that doesn't mean the viral video is a fading art form. The YouTube landscape just looks slightly different than it did a decade ago, with ASMR and unboxing videos often topping the trending lists.

Before embarking on a nostalgia-field YouTube binge, check out the map below to find your state's favorite video.

Here's How Daylight Saving Time Affects Your Part of the Country

Daylight saving time was created to benefit Americans, but not every part of the country is affected equally. Within the Eastern time zone, for instance, the sun rises a whole 40 minutes earlier in New York City than it does in Detroit. To illustrate how daylight saving time impacts sunrise and sunset times around the county, cartographer Andy Woodruff published a series of helpful maps on his website.

Below, the map on the left depicts how many days of reasonable sunrise time—defined as 7 a.m. or earlier—each part of the country is getting. The regions in the yellow sections have the most days with early sunrises and the darker parts have the fewest. On the right, the second map shows how many sunsets past 5 p.m. we’re getting each year, which appear to be a lot more abundant

Next, he visualized what these sunrise and sunset times would look like if daylight saving were abolished completely, something many people have been pushing for years. While our sunset times remain pretty much the same, the mornings start to look a lot sunnier for people all over the country, especially in places like West Texas.

And for those of you who were curious, here’s what America would look like if daylight saving time were in effect year-round. While mornings would look miserable pretty much everywhere, there’d at least be plenty of sunshine to enjoy once we got off work.

You can tinker with an interactive version of the daylight saving map on Woodruff’s blog.